Comment by munificent
5 days ago
Because it's highly relevant, I'm going to paraphrase a comment I made last week:
I think a big part of the problem is that middle-aged men are at the apex of their expectations to be successful in the eyes of society, and we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
There is a name for this in sociology: anomie [1]. Émile Durkheim coined it in his book Suicide, written not too long after the Industrial Revolution.
In times of great change, the set of norms and rules that we take for granted as an organizing principle of our lives get uprooted. It's as if all of the pieces and tokens and rules of the board game we played our whole lives are swept off the table to make room for a new game, but the new game has not been set up yet. In that interim, we all feel a sense of unease. It is our turn to move, but we don't know the rules of the game or what moves to make. We feel intense pressure to play the game well, but don't know how.
In the past, these transitions have ended and society has generally returned to some sense of stability. A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game. I hope we get to that point with AI soon, but the revolutions seem to keep coming faster and faster.
I think for a lot of men, it feels like just at the time when we should be able to rest on our laurels a bit after having worked so hard to play the game society told us to, the rules have been ripped out from under us and any sense of security going forward is lost. We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
It's a psychologically very difficult time.
Well said! 5 years ago I could have a pretty solid picture of what my career would look like through retirement.
Today, unclear what that would look like as well as unclear if the career will even exist that long.
One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright. I've been talking with older folks, and loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife.
> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long.
Not sure exactly where you are in it, but as a 53 year old I disagree. The younger I was the less likely I would have been to disagree but imo/ime the older you get the faster it feels like it is flying by.
> and a full pivot is alright
The AI-related existential dread is that it is very unclear what a pivot looks like when the ground under everything is shifting all at once.
The shifting is certainly a lot more obvious in our career than some others, but all of that shift (so far) happened more or less in a mere 10 months and is accelerating. And I don't think it is very likely that our career will stay anomalous for very long in terms of how much AI impact there is.
yeah, you're down to like 3/4 a career left, it makes sense that you feel that way. Less runway ought to feel different.
I do agree that a safe 'next' is unclear. But I also think if ai truly hits all knowledge work as hard as it might we're looking at up to 50% unemployment. Frankly there is no point career planning at all in that scenario. We will all have much larger problems.
And if it doesn't, then pivoting to some field with a combination of rewarding work and 'enough' pay seems sensible enough.
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> One sunny spot I have is that life is very long. I think I have 1.5 careers left in me, and a full pivot is alright.
I'm 41 and I could, in theory, pivot. But realistically: I'm good at exactly one thing in this world in terms of job ability. I can cook, I can bake, I can play music, but none nearly well enough to actually make a living on it. Thus the end of my tech career, if it should come to pass, basically means I will have to work menial jobs to get by. The future is very bleak for me, and the only real hope is that the tech industry will wake up to what a bad job LLMs do compared to humans. But while I think they will do that eventually, there's no telling how long it will take, and the thought that the market will eventually correct is cold comfort if I can't get a job in the meantime.
Maybe, in the wake of our primary skill being devalued, we should (try to) combine multiple skills into something that has economic value, as Scott Adams put it - https://web.archive.org/web/20250910155157/https://dilbertbl...
The LLMs actually do a better job compared to humans.. and it will only continue to improve
I'm in the same boat as you. I'm not sure what the pivot is.
>loads of people have historically done giant pivots at midlife
Lots of people didn't have their field automated away though alongside most other knowledge work fields, or seen at the same time a drop in demand in manual work and an oversupply (drop in demand because of upcoming AI layoffs, and oversupply in manual fields, because of same)
Everyone can't be a plumber.
In fact one of the worst "trade offs" of the trades is they can very much be a young mans game.
It gets real hard to sling water heaters up/down tight stairs or pull cable in a 100+ degree attic into your 50s.
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pivot to what though, if "mind" jobs are going to be automated, it's not like there's a category of jobs that opens up, and going from mental to physical jobs in your 50s doesn't seem that easy
Physical jobs will drop in demand and increase in supply too. Unemployed "mind" workers don't have much to spend to drive much demand in manual work, and they might even try to pivot themselves to manual work, making things worse for manual workers.
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It's a spectrum, with "physical" and "mental" at each end.
Some of Software folk i know move to repairing electronic devices for living. He still works in AC-room, but instead of holding mouse and keyboard most of the time, now he holds meter probe and soldering iron.
also AI can do physical job. AI can already drive cars, solving simple physical problem isn't going to be a big issue once token per second shoots up.
I guess being soldiers in the war against robots and their owners is a kind of physical job
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Some of my friends found your post misogynic which I did not agree, causing a long discussion. It is due to the focus on the middle aged men. Do you think this challenges are gender specific?
I disagree with a lot of these social analysis texts because I think they misunderstand a fundamental premise. There is no pressure from society today, on the contrary. You had that when we were living in villages where everyone knew each other and it is what city dwellers escaped from.
But this never had been reevaluated. Modern societies are detached, nobody really cares what you do, you don't know your neighbours, you have no "third place" or common place any more.
So norms and rules are far less pronounced than in any other time in human history, far less so.
If you go out without pants in a big city, very few people would care. In better situated parts, you can expect that the police will probably pick you up. In less fortunate environments, you would just be pantless.
This is the opposite of expectations and pressures. I think many just aren't really part of a society or environment any more.
For some that is a great loss while others strive in this state as well. For many having some kind of responsibility is a very important part of their lives, but modern societies offer little here. We optimise for as little attachment as possible to stay flexible and dynamic. That of course can be a pressure as well, but not in the sense it is often suggested.
But summarised I think the problem is fundamentally misunderstood: Society doesn't put pressure on anyone, society simply stopped caring about you. I think this is what most societal analysts get completely wrong.
Strong disagree.
on the one hand, we're detached; on the other hand, social media in particular -- and the media in general -- has increased the amount of pressure and painted a picture of "who you should be". The expectations are greater than ever because we are subjected to the knowledge of the expectations of everyone across the globe, and most of what we see are the "highlight reels" of the successes (or people trying to sell us something to be successful).
Contrary to your premise, society today applies tremendous pressure because our awareness and the continuous bombardment of information, amplifies it. And unless you decide to go and live off grid, or you have a personality such as you can say FU to the world on a daily basis, it's impossible to escape.
Agree. Teen suicide rate correlates with Instagram marketshare and sadly nobody has a solution.
Certainly the level of detachment and alienation has been growing for a long time and is now at quite an extreme. I’m not sure that I would characterize that by saying there is less societal pressure overall though. People feel pressure for lots of reasons and it doesn’t necessarily require the judgment of another individual observing them.
>There is no pressure from society today, on the contrary.
What!?
The examples you give implies people are ok with being bums on the street (and if you think that life is "easy", boy, you're massively detached from reality).
Have you heard that a record number of people still live with their parents after 30?
Have your heard that a record number of people do not own their home these days? It has never been worse.
Have you heard that entire professions are being rendered obsolete due to AI and other economic factors?
Are you aware that almost nobody who is middle-aged (the demographic of TFA) will retire with enough money to make a living off it?
Explain to me how is that a chill, no-pressure life? I do not see it.
You might try to "akshually" your way into "but I'm talking about social pressure", but all of those things are social in nature.
>So norms and rules are far less pronounced than in any other time in human history, far less so.
Ever heard of "misgendering"?
A guy re-posted a meme (not of his authorship) and went to jail, lost his job, etc[1].
Two parents were arrested in front of their kid for complaining about their school, another guy spoke bad about his past employer (but not threatening behavior) and got arrested and his property seized, etc... [2]
Yeah sure man, quite relaxed times, like never before.
1: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7pyjxjxrvo
2: https://freespeechunion.org/news/fsu-dealt-with-211-cases-wh...
I think you need to separate these issues. Economic pressure is a separate concern that doesn't stem from a more arbitrary source. A society can and should shield you from it, but doing so will always create societal expectations on someone else.
If you cannot provide for yourself, someone else has to do so. That someone else technically might be subjected to societal expectations to not leave you behind because he has the means to do so. Mothers still have large expectation on them on how they have to treat their children. If those run around freely, you will get a lot pressure in the US. Quite a silly country. But I believe this is an exception to the general development.
I separate purely economic pressure from the moral and ethical requirements you have today and these are clearly declining in my opinion. These were always subjected to change, but usually expectations get exchanged for new ones and old ones are done away with.
Weird gender science, middle eastern war or domestic politics experts are loud and they do indeed put forward expectations. But their ambitions aren't generally awarded by society, on the contrary. Sometimes for very good reason, sometimes not. But generally there are far less expectations for behaviour, expression, opinions. Also sometimes for good reason and sometimes not.
I think most societies lost expectations and care less about their environment (no in the ecological sense, but that too...).
> The examples you give implies people are ok with being bums on the street (and if you think that life is "easy", boy, you're massively detached from reality).
Which part of the comment implies this?
those things are evidence of that societal pressure relaxing...they simply weren't an option before.
He means for normal people, sure if you go around assaulting people like you could in the unenlightened times you get more pressure. What you both mean by "pressure" is oversocialization you are just looking at 2 sides of the same coin. Well his point is more about people feeling uncared for, I doubt that drives people to suicide. One explaination is that is could this mental l strain could increase the liklihood for mental illness, but that's flat for men in the articles age bracket. You posit that people kill themselves because they have a tough life, again that isn't born out in the data. Indeed collecting data for this is akin to hitting a dartboard while drunk and skydiving and the board is 2 miles away.
The point of society you can increase "true freedom" by restricting people's ability to act arbitrarily, so called "naive freedom". If people can't accept that then they can go live in the woods (not anymore), the ocean, the moon? mars? or end it.
From time immemorial the winners shaped society what do you think happened to the losers? Just because we leave them alive now doesn't mean they can live in the new world.
Also "highest ever" among some specific arbitrary demographic isn't very meaningful enough to draw out anything beyond free association.
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there is a lot of pressure from women because of their hypergamous nature. As they make more and more money get better careers, thair mating pool of mdn they want and who also want them shrinks substantially
Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
This isn't even a flippant comment (especially given the subject matter); being at this age and thinking "I imagined it would all be easy by now" does hit home.
> You hit a point in your life, reflect back on where you'd thought you'd be when you were in your early 20s, and think.. shit.. what I do all of this for?
Do people who say this have kids? I ask genuinely. Everything before my little dude was fake. Everything since him is real deal Holyfield. Probably knock off in the next 20 minutes and take him to Home Depot to look at some bullshit because we have a good time with that kind of thing.
Yes, men who have children do go through nihilistic existential mid life crises too. That age has their biggest risk of cheating on their partners, fathering new children with work colleagues, walking away from marriage, developing drug and alcohol dependency, developing serious gambling problems and other worse things. Parenthood reduces but does not eliminate the risk of suicide in middle aged men, and parenthood plus long term joblessness is a common cause.
Midlife anxieties are real and nothing in particular prevents it.
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I can imagine having kids is super rewarding, but also amplifies the pressure of being a provider probably 100x. In uncertain times, I think a lot of us aren't sure how we'll provide for ourselves in ~5 years, let alone a tiny dude, which plays into the decision to not have kids.
I'm still gainfully employed, and business is ripping, but a huge part of my value as a professional got totally vaporized over the last year. So part of me is extremely glad I don't have kids right now, and part of me is really angry that everything feeling so unstable is leading to our decision to not have them. I know that even in the best time it's a scary decision, but the general vibe is flipping people (like my wife and i) who are at the margin.
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I don't dismiss or discount your perspective but based on my social circle: Your experience of fatherhood is not the median. The variance is pretty high too.
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Kids loose interest in you as they age and do their own stuff. You are necessary for their survival, but they prefer company of peers. And then they leave.
All of that is normal, but you are left alone and if taking the kid somewhere was your only thing, you have nothing.
that's what I felt about moving to a different country, too, until I didn't.
I think these things are less consistent than is often stated, we just see them occur consistently among people with similar lives. The "mid life crisis" is also debunked and replaced by "existential crisis" since it can actually occur at any age, from teenager to elderly, and zero, one, or multiple times. Only in the classic life progression of a certain era, it typically occurred worst at around 40-45 so it got that label.
I would think those with kids at that age that wanted them worked backwards from that mission, and if they have a midlife crisis it's some version of having spent too much time working and on their kid and start spending their money on low-impact possibly expensive hobbies they'd have liked to do in their younger years, somewhat in denial of the fact that they sold their whole life to the man despite raising a kid.
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> Do people who say this have kids? I ask genuinely. Everything before my little dude was fake. Everything since him is real deal Holyfield.
He's gonna grow up and ask you what the fuck were you thinking?
Kids will not always be kids.
I had two kiddos by the time I as 23 and I'm in my late 40s now. I am super glad that they are off on their own, living their own successful lives and I am very proud of them.
You too will (hopefully) watch your children move away.
Personally, when I am down I've been feeling a little like I've finished the main quest in a video game. I can look to my kiddos and be happy that they are doing okay but I still have almost as much adult life in front of me as I have behind me.
While the philosophy degree I got when I was young has helped a lot, I'm middle age, twice-divorced, and haven't had (or needed) a "regular" job, bald (well, I rock a skullet and have 'aura' according to the youngesters), and I can't rock climb as hard as I used to. I don't really enjoy drinking anymore, and I don't enjoy many drugs at all. I've gotten to a position where it's hard to maintain the fantasies that make romantic partners appealing, and while I have deep and diverse friend groups, I still spend most of my time in a shack in the middle of nowhere writing music for no one.
When people shit-talk on humanities educations, it's been hard to keep my mouth shut because the real payoffs have been in being able to meet the long and large world with some equanimity and I feel incredibly privileged to have been so misguided in my early life that I got a deep and canonical education.
There are plenty of things that I can do- keeping with the video game metaphor, I feel like I am working through all possible side quests on hard mode. Being emancipated from my children means that I no longer have to earn very much money or even maintain a stable home if I don't enjoy it.
I bought some off grid land in the middle of nowhere and I am slowly getting utilities working in the shacks. I started doing way more direct political action, including getting an EMT cert so I could volunteer at the local free clinic. I have 4 bands and play 5-6 gigs a month and run an A/V company where I do another 2-3 gigs a month.
So, yeah, I've got a pretty good skill set, I have however easy a life that I choose, lots of engagement in my enclosure. I have kids I am proud of.
And even looking at all that, I look at even a couple of years and sometimes wonder "shit.. what I do all of this for?". And I know that in another 25 years I will still probably asking that question, wondering if there had been a better way to do the things.
Enjoy browsing stuff with your kiddos. That is indeed the important kind of activity. But also, understand that you too will (hopefully) face existential choices in the future.
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Yes. Come on, I love my kid, but you can't seriously be asking this question. Fatherhood is in fact sometimes part of what they're so dissatisfied with.
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>Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
The classic epitome of the mid life crisis has always been something along the lines of, "I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I didn't like, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and all I'm left with is money. My mortality is coming into view, my best years are behind me, and as I sit here in my big house with my fancy car, I realize I wasted all that time all chasing dollars."
That's a lot different than, "I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I didn't like, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and I'm left with nothing at all. I have no prospect for retirement, will likely become homeless and destitute when I am unable to continue working and/or am laid off, and their is no future."
In my case it was more like
"I spent my whole life working and doing a job that I really loved, sacrificing my youth and my precious time with my friends and family, and I'm still left with nothing at all"
I still got burned out. Loving the career didn't change much.
Now the machines do what I loved to do. I had nothing, but at least I had pride and there was social recognition.
All vanities. Life lesson there.
I don't know what I was chasing, some sort of poetic output. I looked a famous people in this career, I just wanted to leave my name there.
But now I don't, I hate AI and I think its a bad path for humanity. I guess I can still leave my name elsewhere, maybe I start the Butlerian Jihad somehow.
I imagine myself being the one bureaucrat in the Jihad that banned the use of CPUs with more power than a 80486. That makes me happy and create a motive to still live.
I can't create anymore, but I can destroy !
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I think this is a perfect description. The feelings continue across generations with no answer. Meanwhile society continues to shift underneath mens' feet. And still tries to claim it is a personal problem. The browbeating/apathy continues.
Internal vs external.
The midlife crisis is probably better described as a change or unease in the self and not knowing why you get out of bed in the morning anymore and that entire adventure, whereas this anomie is the social environment you're moored to breaking down.
> Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
I think there's a step change from say the silent gen/baby boomer generations where a midlife crisis was realizing you lived the classic "American Dream" but weren't going to be a rockstar or super wealthy, compared to now where a midlife crisis could easily be wondering if you will continue to have any economic value at all years before social security kicks in.
Admittedly this is America-centric, but that's my lived perspective, and also I recognize that things weren't always very stable even here, thus why I am comparing a couple of specific generations to the ones that followed.
There was, for a time when I was younger (as a Gen-Xer), just an assumed sense that each generation would have it better than the last. Naive, perhaps, but alas. And obviously far less people assume that anymore.
I thought it was possible a generation could have it worse off through an economic crisis or period of 70s style malaise, but I at least thought the government would attempt to improve the lives of its citizens. I didn't expect the ruling political party to be so aggressively trying to make our lives worse.
Don't forget that social security has been raided and won't even be available for those of us reaching middle age right now and the people we keep electing who say they will do something about it have shown over and over and over that they actually won't.
Anomie plus helplessness plus a feeling of a rug pull of the laws/equality/character of our country. I am not suicidal but wow I get it.
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>Is that not the epitome of the classic mid life crisis?
Not anymore than WWII deaths are the epitome of "classic early life suicide".
If it was "the classic mid life crisis" the rates wouldn't be "highest ever" (as per the post).
Also to work so hard, and even when you have good luck as well, to see the people around you adapting their expectations so fast that they're blasé about what feels like amazing luck and success to you, and to realize that you can never satisfy them, only inevitably let them down when you experience setbacks.
> expectations to be successful
+1. Also maybe it's an age where responsibilities start to peak. More senior positions in the workplace, having children, marriage, etc.
I've had a few stressful periods lately where it felt or feels like I can't load any more on to my plate and I don't even have that many responsibilities - no kids either, just an accumulation of small and background things needing dealt with. I think I do understand people who do commit suicide to an extent - if you add the above normal stresses of life to some highly stressful life events like a breakup or divorce and throw kids etc into the mix - and hey why not a pile of work related stress too - I can absolutely see how people get pushed to the edge.
Modern society has not been arranged in a way that sets people up for success. Staring at device screens for more hours year on year likely doesn't help.
I mean, I kinda like having kids. Even if everything goes in the shitter economically ag least I have something in front of me that is obviously going well.
if things go in the shitter economically, often the wife tries to take the kids. it's a brutal reality, but in this life men are universally valued for what they can provide. if they cant provide, time is ticking until society kicks them to the curb.
You never heard of people who kill their kids and then off themselves?
Mental illness finds a way.
I'm sure some sociologists have written this already, but it seems to me that the people who commit suicide aren't those who are miserable and have few options. It's those who have lots and lots of options, but all options lead to unacceptably bad outcomes.
Microcredit in the third world is somewhat notorious for causing a rise in suicide rates. That fits the pattern: there's a huge number of things you can do to get money to pay back the loan, but if it gets out of hand, none of them get you remotely enough money to keep from sinking deeper into debt. Access to capital gives you many options - but it also makes it your fault when you didn't find the option which would lead you out of miserable poverty (which may not even exist!)
What any psychologist will probably tell you (at least, what all of them told me) is that clinical depression makes you bad at seeing options. Could it be that's in some sense a defense mechanism, trying to stop you from putting the really bad options on the table?
> I'm sure some sociologists have written this already, but it seems to me that the people who commit suicide aren't those who are miserable and have few options. It's those who have lots and lots of options, but all options lead to unacceptably bad outcomes.
People don't all commit suicide for the same reasons. Durkheim's book Suicide which in some ways created the idea of sociology itself categorizes four types of suicide.
Durkheim's classification works as a description, but doesn't seem very good to predict which groups will have high suicide rates. Suicide follows some very odd patterns. For instance
* Black Americans have low suicide rates, lower than white Americans, who in turn have lower than indigenous Americans.
* The children of actors and celebrities have high suicide rates.
* Men have higher suicide rates than women.
* Wealthier countries seem to generally have higher suicide rates than poorer countries, but inside a country the poor usually have higher suicide rate than the rich.
* People with schizophrenia have sky-high suicide rates
The only common thread I can think of is a sense of agency - which means thinking you have many options - with hopelessness. When you can do a lot (or at least you think you can, or society thinks you can), but none of it helps with the things that matter to you.
* Victims of racism may paradoxically be somewhat shielded from suicidal despair from low expectations. But when racism comes with heavy romanticizing (e.g. "noble savage", "ancient proud culture"), expectations are not low. Yet, it's all too understandable why someone would want internalize these romantic, often openly envied identities, even when they're completely at odds with their material situation. You can't live up to it yet you feel like it's all you have.
* Children of e.g. wealthy actors are materially very comfortable and safe, and clearly have lots of agency and choice - but what do they want, when they don't need to strive for wealth, any social acclaim they earn may be tainted by the suspicion that they didn't earn it fairly, and they in any case are unlikely to surpass their parents?
* One typical schizophrenia symptom is sense of agency disturbances. They often feel like they are in control of things they aren't, or don't have control of things which they do. The former, combined with seeing bad things happen (for instance on TV) can really devastate them.
I disagree suicide's primay driver is having lost the sense of purpose and your identity taken away from you !
Okay. Can you think of some groups which have a low sense of agency/few options, yet have a high suicide rate because of their lack of purpose and identity?
I'm looking for evidence against this theory, so I'm very interested if you can find it. But I think it's going to be hard, because they're going to be correlated: if you have a weak sense of self and purpose, then very likely your options will all seem bad too. And even if you have a strong sense of who you are and what your purpose is, failing to live up to the identity society and yourself assign to you (because all the options you have fail at living up to it) then you could well call that "having your identity taken away from your".
Opinions are great and all but do you have actual data to back it up ?
On the mark.
I have however run out of fucks and am ignorantly coasting and making optimal survival decisions only. Fuck the business. Fuck the career. Highly recommended.
Hah likewise. In the early 2003's I was accepted into two of the top compsci universities in Canada but was rejected by the government for a student loan (my parent's income was too high, the government said-- they should pay. thanks government, no shit).
So I put all my fucks into working my ass off. Started dishwashing. Became a cook. Then owned a bakery. Built up a portfolio, became a sysadmin for a large company. After 6 or 7 years the writing was on the wall that I'd be replaced with a call center and some low wagies so I left.
Been working a do-nothing laid back remote job for a year now and never happier. My only source of stress is thinking that giving a shit when I was young would actually lead somewhere when I had the rug pulled under me from the get-go.
Then owned a bakery. That's my exit from software development.
Making cakes are much more soul fulfilling than writing code for soulless machines, let the machines write the code for themselves.
One day we get rid of the machines, scrap their metals to make plows to tend the fields. Like the good old times.
Software development as a career was a utter mistake. Corporations are a mistake.
Maybe AI can fix that, automate bureaucracy, put those useless managers out of work. But I doubt, the class division is too strong, they'll remove the bottom of the pyramid, but not the top.
I want to destroy the pyramid ! But I know just to wait, it will destroy itself because it can't understand human values. All modern jobs are bullshit either way.
Do you have fuck you money?
I have enough money to live a relatively meagre existence. Anything on top of that is welcome.
We feel too old to learn the new rules of the game in time to play well, but not old enough to be able to abstain from playing.
Well said.
Well said.
Part of working through history from (only) 100 years ago is an impression of how quickly societies were changing then. This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.
Which isn't to downplay the upheaval that people are in - it is definitely traumatic. But we've been through disruption before. Hopefully we'll make fewer costly mistakes this time...
> This isn't the first time we've had the table cleared, and it hopefully won't be the last.
I don't think we should wish such evil upon future generations. The industrial revolution was a terrible time to live through, and arguably was not beneficial in the end to humanity. I would be very happy if we never had such a change again.
We can separate the table clearing from how we treat the players of the previous game.
We don't have many coal miners any more. How do we treat the people who used to be coal miners, when we get to 100% clean power? If we are running society well, we give them a hero's sendoff and a nice comfortable retirement life. If we are running society poorly, we take away their homes and healthcare to punish them for not having jobs any more.
I defined success for myself quite a few years ago: I want to leave the world better than I found it. No high aspirations, no figure. Just better than it was.
Some of that is political advocacy. Some of that is open source code that should exist. Some of that is helping a neighbor. I don't need to hit a certain bar, I just need to know that in a given interaction or situation, I am trying to make things... at least a little better.
That also scales well to differing life decisions. The video game I'm playing, can I get people to play a little nicer with each other and have more fun? Workplaces are full of dumb stuff, success is making it at least a little better. Turns out I have kids now. Wasn't the plan, but now my obligation is to make sure my involvement in their lives is positive. Not a specific bar I have to achieve, but you know, someday I hope someone appreciates how I chose to live my life.
"To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch... to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!" - Emerson
No. All that would apply to women too. Men are abused in the West, oh for a few decades now. Women are taking all the college slots, taking most of the new job openings, having more sex and offspring, have more friends, are favored by the legal system, celebrated in the media rather than mocked and derided. Women have a lot of pent up rage after hundreds of years of their own abuse, now that the tables have turned, they are holding the whip hand now as it were…. It’s not anomie.
> they are holding the whip hand now as it were
They aren't holding the whip unless you give them the whip. Biologically you are the one with leverage. Probably economically too. You're the one doing this to yourself. Either stop doing it to yourself, or stop complaining about it
I am not sure if the success per se is the issue, but today things are definitely harder for many people compared to, say, 50 years ago for people of the same age. The available options for you, at age 55, are less with regards to success in general. And then it depends a lot on one's life too; for instance, are they single or not, do they have kids or not, and so forth.
> It's a psychologically very difficult time.
That's true, though it depends on how one handles that. But I think it is also clear that there are fewer options available when you are somewhat old already. People at age, say 20 to 25, may not feel a problem when they are gamers. At age 55, it is much harder to reason as to why you may wish to invest many hours per day into games; it just is not that productive, for most people (excluding e. g. playing to have fun, but that still does not answer the question of producitivity; I exclude professional gamers here, as they can often make a living just from donations, twitch etc.. but most people are not like that. Some of these gamers soon hit the age range 50+ by the way, I do watch a few of them every now and then.)
> A new board game gets set up, new pieces doled out, we learn to play the new game
Reminds me of this idea about sport / competition from the parenting book, The Gardener and the Carpenter by Alison Gopnik. She says that children must be encouraged to explore, not exploit ("play games"), without any end goal in mind. This lets them figure out the world around them and how they can affect it.
As "exploitation" (competition) is a means to use specific knowledge (performance) to achieve goals (progress), it will tend to have winners & losers. "Exploration", otoh, is choosing among umpteen pathways to growth and learning. Of course, middle-aged folks can seldom afford to not be playing games, but perhaps in times of change, they need to be exploring like children again.
Also see this post on Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s? about Pyscho-Cybernetics & achieving goals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34053801
maybe some just don't want to live that long. does everyone need to live as long as possible? you live your youth, and maybe that is enough for some.
if you start to hurt every day, get diagnosed with age-related disease, your cognition starts to deteriorate, etc, you might just decide "hey, i lived enough. i don't want to go through years of feeling like this."
I think about this increasingly often. I have accomplished much, and have seen much of the world. I have also lived through gruesome deaths in my family and have seen how aging in America, under American healthcare looks.
I retired in 2023, not because I could, but because I couldn't not. I'm almost 50. My parents died in their early 60s. I have some of their health problems, and some of my own. I also destroyed my back in a motorcycle accident many years ago and live with constant pain.
My favorite things to do, which bring my peace and joy, involve me sitting in a chair, which hurts my back. In my youth I rode my bicycle avidly, which now hurts my back. I love gardening, and if I do it too much, it hurts my back.
It became increasingly clear to me that my "purpose" in this country is to work until I die. I know that there are other countries, and other kinds of lives, but they are not where my wife and friends and life are.
I am happy, relatively healthy, and love life. I would like to live forever if I could. I know I could fill every minute of it with things I find interesting, even if it was just reading every single book.
But I've seen what American life looks like in your 60s and older, and it's not fucking pretty for most people.
IME cycling a recumbent can ease stress on the back. https://sheldonbrown.com/org/greenspeed-index.html
Sure its a little off putting but if you've the time and money it could be worth trying.
Are you me? My old motorbike injuries are a little more distributed but -- like yours -- almost entirely crippling from the perspective of doing anything joyful; we're in the same bucket yearwise; and it sounds like we always visit the doctor with just the one bullet in the chamber.
Mostly just posting to say, hey, there's others out here like you. Hang in there, Almost-Me. If not, see you on the other side.
Have you heard of the book Healing Back Pain by Sarno? I haven't personally experienced it, but people seem to swear by it. A pretty non-traditional approach to pain management.
Deadlifts helped my chronic congenital back pain that is probably some combination of DDD and scoliosis and multiple herniations. Yes sometimes it pisses off the disks and I'm pretty useless for a day or two. And yes it has added some other problems. But overall I went from constant sharp pain nearly unable to remain seated, to occasional dull pain I can ignore, and rarely some really bad pain. Overall it's much better of a life.
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A hurting back on a bike might be an issue of bike fit. Bicycle touring is a hobby regarded as accessible to even the elderly, and indeed one often comes across people age 50-80 on popular routes. Many of them will complain about a bad back off the bike when doing other things like camping or carrying panniers, but a fitted bike should not strain one's back.
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Have you tried drinking cherry juice? I heard moving to Washington can help due to the air there.
That's why Mishima topped himself at the age of 45: as a physical-conditioning buff and gay man, he came to a firsthand realization that it was all downhill from there. What you posted is very similar in spirit to the opening of his last novel.
For most people, the real physical deterioration doesn't have to kick in until age 65 or so (plus or minus). But you do have to show up every day and hit it hard. In the last triathlon I raced there were men in that age group still finishing with fast times. And they're not genetic freaks either, just consistent.
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FWIW, you can remain in pretty extraordinary physical shape through your 50s as a matter of biology. You do have to put in the work though.
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Much easier said than done. Ending your life is the last decision you'd make.
Personally I think it has to do it's harder than ever to meet and find a partner.
That is a very interested lens to view this issue through, I hadn't considered that! I'm not quite that age, though I think my age can be discerned from my post history lol, but even outside of being generally impacted by this, the biggest impact I've felt has been how others around me are reacting. Half a dozen INCREDIBLE engineers that I used to work with left explicitly because they don't like how AI is changing the industry.
I don't know, it feels to me, in my limited scope of experience and view, that things are getting a lot worse, very quickly, and it frightens the hell out of me.
Wow just a short reading of this wikipedia is fascinating. It reminds me of a thought I had years ago about what is lost with the introduction of abstracted currency (i.e. dollars). I assume this is an established concept, but when you barter with someone, besides the transaction, you learn about what that person needs. With abstracted currency, this information doesn't get transferred.
Anyway, seemed relevant to the wikipedia.
This makes a lot of sense to me. I used to have plans for the future, I had the next couple of years mapped out. Then I tried AI and my plans simply dissolved. I have no idea what's going to happen now.
Feels like all the effort I put into coming this far was invalidated overnight. The writing is on the wall, and now I have about five years to get rich at any cost until it's all over. Now I'm firing from the hip in all directions, trying to hit something, anything.
I used to enjoy programming as a hobby, writing articles. It's all so meaningless now. What's the point?
I'm not sure a focus on getting rich is the answer, and you probably don't have 5 years before that window closes. I'm going to focus on trying to rebuild my business so that if other businesses were run the same way, we'd hopefully all keep most of our agency in the AI economy. If you can't build a business or a coop that way, activism on that front is probably a more valuable way to build yourself a brighter future.
I don't get why people say that they have X years to be rich. If the revolution is going to be that big, why do you believe that fiat money, real estate or even private property will be valid in that future? The owners of AI would have all the leverage, it doesn't matter how much money you have. And if AI is that revolutionary, it won't have owners
I don't know. I'm just trying to make the best possible decisions with the information available to me.
If we achieve a post-scarcity society, then nothing I do today matters. If we don't, then hopefully having money will lead to a better outcome than not having it.
The transition could take a long time, so money and assets could still help in the near term.
> we are living through a period of time where success is very hard to define, much less attain.
Do you think this has changed from say 10 or 20 years ago? To me, I don't get the sense that there has been shift in the social definition of success. Maybe I'm missing something?
> Do you think this has changed from say 10 or 20 years ago?
Yes, I do.
The goal is roughly the same: financial security, a good home, as much of a family as one cares to raise.
But for basically my entire life as a middle-aged American, there was a well-lit path to that goal:
1. Do good in high school.
2. Go to a university and get some four year degree. Obviously some degrees are duds, but basically any of them was considered a worthwhile investment.
3. Get a white collar job doing something intellectual. Make a decent salary at a stable company. Change jobs periodically as needed.
Now:
1. Doing well in high school is still important, but it is very easy for kids to get good grades using AI while not actually learning anything and not realizing they are setting themselves up for hardship.
2. College is so expensive now that determining which college and which degree is actually a sound financial investment is very hard. An 18 year-old-kid is being asked to make a financial choice with life-long consequences at a point when they have none of the expertise about their long-term goals to know what to do.
3. AI will very likely eliminate many of these jobs. People will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs and who knows what on your resume will actually help you stand out? Also, most of the blue collar jobs are already gone, either automated away (ag) or moved overseas (manufacturing).
There was also a sense in the US that even if the government wasn't great, it was at least functional and a source of relative stability run by somewhat mature adults. That is clearly no longer the case at the federal level.
What's different is that people who thought they were basically on the "golden path" suddenly have no idea what their job looks like in five years or if it exists.
I agree for SWE specifically that AI is changing the career dramatically, and in a way that makes life less predictable. But I don’t know how the definition of success has changed - at least in America it still seems to be good professional job plus family.
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In 2006 was success not having a big house in the suburbs and a six figure salary?
Right. Has that changed? Asking genuinely.
AI chatbots contributing to or reinforcing suicidal ideation.
no rules/syllabus is an opportunity to be creative. No one has it figured out. Everyone is winging it. If you lock in, you will be the expert!
Never kill yourself, life is awesome after overcoming challenges
There are numerous NDE reports that say people who commit suicide go through extreme agony after they die. It’s never an option. Tell this to anyone who thinks about this mistake and it may help him. Although he should do his own part of searching and listening to such stories to understand how big of a mistake this is.
true but the pieces we value are also being pried from our hands.
I also don't think it compares to the industrial revolution, these are primarily sociological conditions - these suicidality figures predate the current AI implications.
we are also flooded with the highly curated exceptionalism of others.
Sorry but it has very little to do with expectations. As a middle aged man you have very little opportunity to start a new career (regardless if there is even any remaining soon). In an absolutely objective way, physically and socially.
Yup, I tell my partner all the time. I just want the new era to be here already. I hate this waiting. I'm very annoyingly optimistic and think we're headed for post-scarcity.
In wealthy first-world countries we're already post-scarcity to a first approximation for stuff like food, clothing, and consumer electronics (I do understand that a minority of people are still desperately poor). But the stuff that people really covet will always be scarce. For example, AI can't create new real estate in prime locations.
I'm a bit of an AI pessimist, but creating new prime locations is one thing I do think AI could feasibly do. I have been involved in regeneration projects for 30 years and so many of the limiting factors could theoreticslly be eliminated by AI.
I hope you're right.
Eh, I don't think today is really all that different from the last 100 years. We as software engineers may feel different as it's (maybe) our turn in the barrel.